Thinking about the Experience
Let us now examine the practices and principles of the Participatory Approach.
Observations Principles
1 The teacher dialogues with students in
order to learn what is happening in
their lives.What happens in the classroom should be
connected with what happens outside.
The teacher listens for themes in what
students say that will provide the content
for future lessons.
2 The teacher poses a problem that was
voiced by several women during a
discussion from a previous class.The curriculum is not a predetermined
product, but the result of an ongoing
context-specific problem-posing process.3 The teacher asks a number of questions
and leads the class in discussing the
problem.Education is most effective when it is
experience-centered—when it relates to
students’ real needs. Students are
motivated by their personal involvement.
Teachers are co-learners, asking
questions of the students, who are the
experts on their own lives.
4 The teacher asks the students if they
want to write a group letter. She elicits
the content of the letter from the
students by asking leading questions.When knowledge is jointly constructed, it
becomes a tool to help students find a
voice; and by finding their voices,
students can act in the world. Students
learn to see themselves as social and
political beings.
5 The teacher writes down what the
students tell her. She reads the text
aloud, and the students do, too. She
asks them if they want to make any
changes. She offers feedback as well.
After the changes have been made, the
teacher has the students read the letter
out loud several times.Language teaching occurs with texts that
the students have co-constructed.6 Afterwards, the students copy the letter
in their notebooks. They work on
editing it for homework.Focus on linguistic form occurs within a
focus on content. Language skills are
taught in service of action for change,
rather than in isolation.